The second annual Make With Ada contest has just opened for submissions that design and implement an embedded software project where Ada and/or SPARK are the principal language technologies. To discover what's required take a look at last year's prize winning entries.

This embedded software project competition is sponsored by AdaCore, provider of commercial software solutions for Ada as part of an:

initiative initiative to foster the growth of Ada and SPARK for developing embedded systems and more generally for developing “software that matters”.

The deadline for the contest is September 15th and there is a prize pool of over €8000. It is open to individuals aged 18 and over (or the age of majority in their country of residence) and small teams of individuals (not organizations) with up to four members.

Projects for the contest must use the Ada or SPARK languages. They can optionally use components written in other languages (such as third-party libraries), but only the original part of the Project using Ada or SPARK will be evaluated using the following four criteria:

OpenDoes the Project have a Free Software License, as defined by the Free Software Foundation or an open-source licence, as defined by the Open Source Initiative? Does it have an open design? Does it use open tools, hardware and platforms?

CollaborativeIs the Project usable by other members of the programming community? Does it have clearly-defined interfaces and documentation? Is it available in a public repository through a version control system such as svn or git? Does it have a bug tracking system? Can it be built with tools available to the community?

DependableDoes the Project make use of processes and technologies that provide high confidence that the software meets its requirements (for example formal methods, contract-based programming, testing, and coding standards)? Is its documentation accurate?

InventiveDoes the Project demonstrate out-of-the-box thinking, does it bring new solutions to an existing problem, or apply existing solutions to a novel one?

Commenting on the inaugural contest held in 2016, competition judge William Wong said:

“Judging last year’s Make with Ada competition showed me how developers new to Ada and SPARK could quickly come up to speed with these languages and produce some ingenious embedded applications"

It was won by Stephane Carrez with an EtherScope monitoring tool which analyses Ethernet traffic by reading network packets (TCP, UDP, IGMP, etc.), performing real-time analysis, and displaying the results on a 480x272 touch panel. Second place was awarded for a framework was developed in Ada 2012 for developing control software for the NXP cup race car and third place went to a Bluetooth Beacons project.

This year, in addition to the cash prizes, the best ranking student finalist will receive a Printbot Portable 3D printer and all active participants will receive a "Make with Ada" t-shirt at the conclusion of the competition.

Other elements of the AdaCore initiative to promote Ada and Spark for embedded system are free on-line training available at AdaCore U (u.adacore.com), various resources for free software developers and students/hobbyists at the GitHub repository (github.com/AdaCore) and the libre site (libre.adacore.com).

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